The unmet needs
And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:19
Often, we are taught to think rationally, but not how to feel our emotions. Culture may perceive emotion as weak, so we tend to suppress and bury our emotions. But emotions are God's gift and they are the key to understanding our deepest needs. Emotions are signals, they are like the oil warning light on a car's dashboard to alert us to our needs.
We experience positive emotions when our needs are met, and negative emotions when they are not. Please note that emotions and human needs are complex topics, I am trying to identify our general and core needs here.
As with food and water, security, self-worth, and significance are also basic and core human needs. Therefore, we tend to seek out relationships to meet our need for self-worth, and a better job to meet our need for security and significance.
If those needs are met, we feel joyful, pleased, satisfied, and peaceful. If those needs are unmet, we might experience anxiety, anger, and sadness. We tend to judge ourselves or others as the cause of negative emotions rather than feeling them and asking ourselves "what our unmet needs are?"
As an example, I felt frustrated when my coworker was late to a recent business dinner without informing me in advance. In fact, he was late repeatedly. It was always me who prepared those events and he wasn't much of a help. I complained to my friend about his unchanged behavior. My friend asked, “Do you feel frustrated because he is unreliable and you feel left alone to handle things on your own? The words struck a chord with me. His absence or lateness were stimuli that surfaced a sense of unmet security needs. I admitted "I do feel sadness that I always need to face problems and figure things out on my own.”
I reacted with blame-shifting and judgment, instead of feeling my own emotions about what truly was wrong. Therefore, we should pay attention to the signals of emotions. When we are confronted with negative emotions, self-awareness is crucial. In addition, we need to practice self-compassion and ask God to reveal the root causes of our bad feelings, so we become more equipped to deal with them.
Like today’s key verse, God is the only one who can fulfill all our deepest needs. Once we know this truth in our hearts, we will be on the right path to emotional wholeness, so we can become “healed people heal people.”
Blessing prayer: You are the only one who can meet our needs. Help us to bring all negative emotions into alignment with your truth and revelation. In Jesus' name, Amen
